AMD Radeon R9 290 launch price announced

AMD has launched the new Radeon R9 290, the second of their Hawaii GPUs based on a tweaked version of the Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture.

The Radeon R9 290 is very close to its larger sibling, the R9 290X, but retails for a much lower price tag. At launch the R9 290 will cost just $399 in the US and Canada.

That’s $150 down from the R9 290X and $50 down from the price-cut Geforce GTX780.

The R9 290 will be available from this week at several retailers, although stocks will be limited due to high demand overseas. AMD’s RRP is around R6,000 but can be expected to fluctuate as our exchange rate with the Dollar changes.

Specification

Radeon R9 290X

Radeon R9 290

Geforce GTX Titan

Geforce GTX780

Shader Cores

2816

2560

2688

2304

Raster Operators

64

64

48

48

Texture units

176

160

224

192

Clock speed

727MHz

727MHz

837MHz

863MHz

Boost speed

1000MHz

954MHz

876MHz

900MHz

Memory speed

1250MHz

1250MHz

1502MHz

1502MHz

VRAM buffer

4GB

4GB

6GB

3GB

Bus width

512-bit

512-bit

384-bit

384-bit

Bandwidth

320GB/s

320GB/s

288GB/s

288GB/s

TDP

300W

300W

250W

240W

Current price

$549

$399

$999

$500

The R9 290 has just a few shaders cut from its chip design, dropping down to 2560 shader cores. That also brings down the total number of texture units to 160, but the number of raster operators, default VRAM size and clock speed as well as the memory bus remains the same.

As is tradition with AMD’s high-end GPUs, the reference heatsinks are the same and do not differ in the slightest.

The video port selection is also identical and the power requirements (and indeed power consumption) are also very similar. The R9 290 is $150 cheaper than the R9 290X, and only a slightly slower.

looks like for the first time in almost 10 years ill be moving away from nVidia

iTile

You can expect a 150% price increase for the local market. I think its the first time i’m going to be writing a letter to whomever looks at price fixing in SA. Apart from the 25% tax on the card, those prices are RETAIL, in dollars, thus suppliers should be getting it in at a cheaper price + 25% tax +20-30% profit margin, + retail store adding another 30% for profit, we should be looking at R7000 max for this card retail. But suppliers is nailing the quick profit returns policy. So everyone can expect a R500 cheaper than R9 290X. Don’t get your hope up to buy one. We should be complaining and question these extremely high prices on GPUs. Many other electronics is actually cheaper. I’m ordering mine from a US eTailer instead of supporting the local businesses for a change. I’m kinda tired of these extremely high prices for PC components.

Vorastra

You do know that this isn’t just South Africa right…
R9 290 is $399, in GBP it should be 250. But yet it’s going to be selling for GBP350…..

ArchieChoke

Same here, but not moving, still going to keep my 1x Nvidia card and have 2 crossfire cards, for ATI/Frames + Nvidia/Physx = all goodness.

FlashGear

Just wait on PhoenixTechSA pricing, they already launched the R9 290X way lower than SA pricing. R1k on avg less. I suspect the 290 will be around R6.5k with them

BlackDragonSS

I see Evetech put them up as coming soon for R6499.99, but I’ll
be getting myself the Sapphire Toxic R9 280x when they become available.

Sgt.Romeo9

It’s impressive if the price stayed the same converted to Rand, meaning about R3999 but it won’t. So I’m very happy with my R9 280X especially for the price I got it @ 3 and a half and it plays BF4 full graphics so I really can’t complain. Oh and Wesley in the last sentence, remove the “a”